Silence
by Jackie Ryan
Summary: John reflects on the incident at the pool, and the silence that follows.


**A/N: So this obviously isn't a possible situation in Sherlock, and I guess this particular sort of fan fiction would've been written just after the finale, but yeah, I'm sure y'all can deal.**

There had been so much noise, in those moments just before. All noise and thought, tactics and rescue. But then it got quiet, and this silence, this awful silence, pressed against my brain, the pressure of it building in my ears. It roared, like the sea against a reef, as I lost control, as I saw this war zone go dark with dust and crumbling walls.

The unbearable silence tortured me, and I felt as though I had swam too far under the water, like when I would dive deep into the ocean when I was young. The silence tortured me, this raw, bleeding memory, just seen and yet just abandoned, tortured me.

And then the silence went at peace, as did I. If I could have wondered, I would've questioned whether I was sleeping, or dead. But as luck should have it, I couldn't wonder. Not then, not now. At that moment, all senses had eluded me. I was frozen in time and space. The only other thing with me was silence, now just an acquaintance. After a minute, a month, maybe a year, I gained a sense of touch. I felt.

I felt softness beneath me, supporting me. A cloud, not made of water, but of linen. A bed. It was so soft. A life in the military, and time as a man with little funds taught me to respect a firm cot; but now I was at peace, no need to think like a soldier. That would come later, a future battle with the now peaceful silence.

The undisturbed silence was broken by my slow breathing, almost shallow and far away, and then by an old, knowing voice. It echoed in and out of my ears, faint and shaky, and I didn't understand. At some point, it told me of doctors and bombs and bones. It told me of men. It told me of war. It told me of silence. You may lose...I heard it say.

And then I slept.

In this sleep, silence was absent. No sound echoed and floated. The crack of the gunshot was distinct. Every scream was vibrant in my mind. I heard the cracking of brick and wood and drywall, I heard the splashes of heavy objects in water, I heard a high, evil laugh. And then I heard him, calling my name, tears in his voice. And then I heard a sickening crunch of breaking bone and snapping flesh and blood spilling to the ground, evil laugh haunting in the distance.

I saw nothing. The dream was only darkness, a new experience. I would prefer sight, prefer knowing what I had done that night. Prefer to know what had happened to them. But my only knowledge came from the sounds, the sharp cracks and deep rumbles, almost as if they were from the bowels of hell itself. And that laugh, that evil laugh, of which I longed to see its owner, longed to see a result, an outcome, but I only heard the laugh, until it too weakened.

I would have preferred it rung in my ears when I woke up. But the silence was there, an everlasting pain, stabbing me now. I was reminded, finally, of my friend, whom I'd temporarily shoved from my head when the dream laugh hurt us. Reminded, permanently, of past events, of dark dreams, wanting so dearly to call to him. I screamed his name, I yelled for him and cried for him, struggling in that soft bed, but I heard nothing. I saw, in the darkness, people in scrubs, holding me down, and barely felt the needle pierce my forearm. I faded away once again, the silence winning me over.

I was warm when I awoke. The sun was dancing on my face, emitting a joy I had not felt in so long. But I didn't know why. I didn't know how long. Time had become a long blur, disorientation the only thing I'd known in...how long? In the back of my mind, I was reminded of being shot in the war, but it was a thought buried too deep, and I could not acknowledge it. All I knew was that soft bed, that soft bed and that suffocating silence. I mumbled his name again, but heard nothing.

And then the man was there. His face matched that old voice, the one of bombs and bones from so long ago. He was writing now. He handed me a slip of paper with his old hands. I recognized a doctor's fingers, nimble for surgeries and prescription writing, palms scrubbed thoroughly.

_Hit to the head, dead before we got there. Nothing to be done._

And the silence strangled me. I could no longer breathe as it sucked the air from my throat, clogged my ears and fogged my brain. I said his name again, an effort to keep my head clear, to keep the silence at bay, to keep my friend with me.

Sherlock...

I didn't hear it.

The paper was taken from my hand, flipped over and scribbled on again. When I read it again, I knew I was laughing. I knew the hospital room was blurry with my tears, the ones that filled my eyes and soaked my face, but I could not explain it, I could not hear it.

_Brain damage. Deaf. Irreversible._

The silence enclosed my brain, and darkness surrounded. I had slipped, once again, into the blur. A dreamless sleep would weight me down, but only then. Only that day, and then never again. But that blur, that disorientation, would stay. My days would be short, my nights dragging on. Time sped forward.

What a silent funeral. What a lonely funeral. Such a quiet Mrs. Hudson. Such a quiet flat. Only silence now. It would roar, stab, strangle, render me at peace or unconscious. I did not hear the kettle while making tea, I did not hear a bad telly show, I did not hear a violin, now dusty in the corner. I did not hear the man trying to help me, shaping his hands in the air, hoping to teach me to communicate again. But I never will.

Funny, isn't it, how something inanimate, scientific, perhaps non-existent, can remind you of a person. How the loudness of silence makes you recall life before a person, how the stabbing reminds you of all they said about him, just after meeting, how the strangling reminds you of being tied to a chair by circus freaks, awaiting his rescue. How peaceful the silence was when he solved a case and you fed him up, how thick sleep was after long days of running: with him, for him.

I sleep again in a foreign bed, but so comforting, so familiar. I lay here now, curled in the dark, the silence pressing my brain, my chest. Sherlock's bed is soft, and only in this bed, there are dreams without silence. Without silence, without sight. Only Sherlock screaming and Moriarty laughing. The ghosts of their memories haunted me nightly, as I recalled again the bomb and the pool.

One day, I may have a dream I can see. One with the sights and sounds of Sherlock deducting, of his breath as we run, of a clean violin. One where those few painful moments could be forgotten, as they often were in our life together. One without the man who destroyed me, without his awful laugh. No roaring, stabbing and strangling, just the calm that fills us as we run, chase, catch. As he deducts, and plays the violin, and worries Mrs. Hudson, as all the chaos in our lives takes perfect form, in one lovely dream. But I know, deep down, that this will be my last dream, the dream I never wake up from.

I can't wait for it.


End file.
